“…I, Me! … Are the Dirtiest of All Pronouns!”

Abstract

Italo Calvino, in one of the six lectures he prepared for Harvard University, published in the book Six Memos for the Next Millennium (Penguin Modern Classics), specifically in “Multiplicity”, cites the Italian writer Carlo Emilio Gadda (1893-1973): “…I, me! … are the dirtiest of all pronouns! The pronouns! They’re the lice of thought. When a thought has lice, it scratches, like everyone who has lice… and they get in the fingernails, then… you find pronouns: personal pronouns…”

Based on this quote, an irreverent critique of personal pronouns, we briefly and informally review some of the trends or dramaturgical resources in our current theatre, with special emphasis on “dramaturgies of the self”.